The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-09-04
CLARA BARTON.
Some Points About the Coming Red
Cross Convention.

NEW YORK, Sept. a--The international
Convention of the Red Cross assemblies at
Carlsruhe on September ~ Delegates from
thirty-two nations, comprising every civil
lied country on the globe, are expected to
attend the session. President Cleveland's
appointees, representing the United States,
viii sail from New York ON Monday, They
are Miss Clara Barton and DR.. j. b. Hub
bell The last Red Cross convention was
held in 1854 1t was said OF it at the time
that not a man of its 800 or 400 delegates
was unknown, and that no such number of
royalties, nobilties and military and scien-
tific notabiities had been drawn together III
Europe for years. Miss Barton then, as now,
represented this country, almost the only
feminine delegate in the assemblage, and,
lone American woman that she was, carried
resolutions and amendments that material
ly enlarged the scope of Red Cross activi-
ties and assimilated its workings in Europe
to plans already put in execution in this
country.
Clara Barton, whose name is known the
world over in connection with the worlds
hospital flag, the burning cross on white
ground, is a woman of 80 or Whereabouts,
whose face corresponds with the ideal that
one might form Of her character. Her hair
is that rare thing i'll nature, artists some
times call 1T an impossible thing, raven
black. 1t is thick, heavy hair, a burden to
the comb and she wears it after the simple
fashion of our mothers and grandmothers,
drawn in satiny waves down over the ears,
and pinned up in loose curls behind. Her
eyes are like her hair, very dark. Her
features are regular, but one hardly notices
them for the rare beam of good will that
shines out from the soul through the counte-
nance. Miss Barton is of medium height
and somewhat slender build. She is an adj
mirable conversationalist and owes her sue
cess in her philanthropic work not merely
to her great organizing and executive
ability, but also i'll great measure to her
faculty OF clear speech to putting what she
wishes done into language so simple and
direct that nobody can misunderstood or
fail to wish to help her in it, Miss Barton
was nominated as President of the American
Red Cross Association by President Gar
field, and in that capacity stands at the
head of a movement in this country which
i'll other lands is almost altogether in mas
culine handss and which has claimed the
services of some of the best minds of the
time. She is a quiet, unaSsuming woman,
living very simply in Washington, when al
lowed to be at home, and though one of the
most prominent is in another sense one of
the least known women in America.
CLARA BARTON COMES OF GOOD OLD
PURITAN
stock. She is a Massachusetts, woman,
daughter of one Mad Anthony Wayne's old
soldiers. When Sumter was fired on she
was young woman, occupying somewhat
responsible position in government employ.
She threw up her place at once, conse-
Grating her life to her country as truly as
did any one of the thousands of volunteers
who sprang to arms, and reported for SER
vice, to look after the Massachusetts men
who were attacked in Baltimore on their
way to Washington. Miss Barton was not
an army nurse in the usual sense Of the
word. She was not another Florence
Nightingale nor in any way like Florence
Nightingale. OF the minutiae of nursing
she knew and knows comparatively little
She was q woman of unique organizing
power, whose especial gifts for planning
and supervising relief work We're speedily
recognized at the army headquarters and at
the White House She did not work with
the Sanitary Commission, but was whole
sanitary commission in herself She in
spired involuntary confidence, and steam
boats and military trains We're placed at
her disposal for the distribution of supplies
and the transportation of provisions. She
served in the Army of the Potomac, was
present at the battles of Cedar Mountain,
second Bull Run, Chantilly and Antietam;
was with Burnside's corps at Fredericks-
burg, was eight months at the siege of
Wagner lat the battles of Spottsylvania and
the Wilderness, in front of Petersburg
during Buffers campaign. She was the
only woman on Morris Island when shot
and shell fell like hail, removing the dying
and wounded. She met the Andersonville
prisoners at their release, and to her help
many of them owed it that they were able
to go home to their friends in the North
1t was Miss Barton who at her own ex-
pense, and when military men said the thing
was impossible, organized the Bureau of
Records of Missing Men, making it SO eff
Gent as to be of substantial value to the
government and an inexpressible help to the
soldiers friends at home. 1t was Miss Bar
ton who urged the government to identify
the graves of the men who died at AndeI-
sonville, and who. when she was told that
it could not be done, spent five years tracing
the occupants of the 1900 graves, and pub
lished at last the most pathetic volume that
ever saw type, giving one line to each dead
mans name, and by system of cataloguing
indicating the place of burial so plainly
that his relatives could reclaim the body if
they wished.
THIS DONE, BROKEN IN HEALTH,
Miss Barton went abroad. 1t was with her
European experience that the new phase of
work with which her name is now identified
began. When the Franco-Prussian war
DTOk6 OuU Sllc was db Dti lilS W resi-.
Within three days a number of the agents
of the Red Gross, which had been organized
in Europe under the Geneva convention in
1864, were at the door of her villa asking
for the benefit of her experience and help
She was not strong enough physically to
take the same active part in relief work
that she had done here, but a second call
came before long, this time from the Grand
Duchess Louise, of Baden, the only daughter
of Emperor William who had taken the
charge of the hospital work in her own
hands.
The story of the days she spent with the
Grand Duchess, as heard from her own lips,
is horrible dream of war. The Duchess
with her court formed, committee of
and relief, and her castles
through all Baden were turned into military
hospitals. Miss Barton relates that the
news Of the fall of Strasburg was brought
them by a courier, mud-spattered and out
of breath, who dropped on his knee before
the Duchess as they were catching a breath
of air ON the balcony, gasped out, 'Stras-
burg is fallen and tainted at her feet. Miss
Barton was in Strasburg with the victors
next day, caring for women whose breasts
had been shot away by shells, feeding chill
dren and organizing relief far the wounded.
She followed the German army to Paris,
worked as faithfully in French and G., rman